Opportunities Lost and Found (The Butterfly Effect)
by TrylonAndPerisphere
Summary: A barely-edited drabble, because the idea hit me and wouldn't go away. What if something as simple as a stray puff of wind had changed entirely how Delphine and Cosima met?


Things were not going according to plan.

Delphine waited in the hallway for twenty minutes, her fake crying getting more and more difficult to muster, until she gave up. She headed back to the lab, hoping that she could rally her tear ducts for one more shot at damsel-in-distress, but when she got there, the subject was gone. The forged school records she had left on the desk across from the – just thinking about the word gave her a fizzy feeling every time – _clone_ had somehow slipped to the floor, and the dreadlocked student was nowhere in sight. In fact, someone completely different was at that table, a stout young man with a worryingly patchy attempt at a goatee, preparing slides.

"Excuse me," she stopped before him, "did you see the woman who was at this table a short while ago?"

The man looked up and promptly dropped the slide in his hands, managing to flip it in the process so it landed sample down, ruining it.

"Oh, er," he mumbled, clearly overcome by being addressed by a beautiful woman who towered over him even without counting her majestically tousled coiffure. "I, uh, no. The table was open when I got here…"

The neural pathway governing his speech seemed to fizzle out, so Delphine just nodded and left. _Merde._ She was going to try another ploy to get to know Cosima Niehaus.

_Maybe I should have taken that improv class before trying this assignment after all,_ she grumbled internally. Leekie made it sound so easy. _Time for plan B, I guess._

* * *

Plan B didn't work, either. She had "accidentally" bumped into the woman she was meant to monitor in line at the coffee shop she frequented. She had even gotten to say "I'm sorry" and flash her a smile, which 324b21 started to return, when Cosima's gaze moved to the side, her brow furrowing, and Delphine realized she had a cell phone against her other ear.

"Wait, what?" the petite student asked incredulously of whoever was on the other end of the line. "_'Big Boob Blowies?_'" She looked back up at Delphine and muttered "hold on" into the phone. Delphine felt the hand that Cosima had wrapped around her arm to steady her when they collided give a little squeeze, and felt a tingle as their eyes fully met.

"Are you okay?" Cosima asked her with a small, distracted smile.

"Uh, oui…" Delphine answered, feeling herself nodding like an idiot.

"Sorry," Cosima mouthed at her, her eyes shifting again as the person on the other end of the line obviously said something. Before Delphine could move, Cosima had given a little head bob at her and left the line, swiftly exiting the shop. Delphine gaped after her.

"Merde," she swore again.

* * *

Delphine was feeling increasingly frustrated an embarrassed. Cosima seemed to be constantly busy, immersed in studies or phone calls, and Delphine realized that she was failing spectacularly at befriending her subject. Leekie was beginning to use his condescending tone even more often to her, but more than that, following and observing the woman without the excuse of getting to know her was feeling increasingly stalker-ish and creepy. Not that being a monitor wouldn't be a little creepy in and of itself (but for good reasons!), but this pursuit had somehow really brought it home to her. On top of that, the more she observed Cosima, the more fascinated she felt with the young scientist. Seeing Cosima in a lab, talking with the lanky, awkward boy she was consulting with, or giving a presentation in class proved just how brilliant she was, and seeing the way she moved, the creases of thought on her forehead, her amazing smile when she joked with others, was oddly compelling.

One day, Delphine had been pulled from the annoyed haze of musing on just how much it felt like a classic nightmare to find herself sitting in a classroom listening to a poorly-presented lecture again after having already acquired her doctorate by Cosima's lucid questions and comments to the professor, and, as she laughed along with the rest of the class when Cosima said something witty, she decided she could no longer wait. Biting her lip as the professor wrapped up, she took a breath and changed tactics from "chance meeting" to introducing herself.

"Euh, hello," she called, somewhat awkwardly pulling up to walk beside Cosima after scrambling to catch up with her.

Dreads swirled as her bespectacled subject turned her head and slowed.

"Oh, uh, hello?" Cosima responded with a small, surprised smile.

"You are Cosima?" Delphine began, and Cosima nodded. "I have seen you in class. Your comments are so insightful and so funny…" Delphine's tongue faltered. For some reason, talking to this woman was making her flustered. Cosima was cocking her head, friendly but a bit puzzled.

"I… particularly liked when you told Professor Haeckel that his construct was 'bullshit,'" Delphine continued, with a chuckle, and felt her cheeks warm. Up close, Cosima was really stunning. And she smelled good, too.

"Oh, uh, thanks," Cosima smiled wider. "Just, well… I'm evo-devo, so I always say 'show, don't tell.'"

The two women looked at each other, as a voice inside Delphine's head kept asking _what is_ wrong _with you_ as her tongue played dead, again, for a moment. She was lost in an unexpected nervousness and the warmth of the brown eyes looking into hers. _Get back on plan._

"I really enjoyed your presentation on epigenetics and copy-number variation," she finally offered, reinforcing her confidence with the fact that she really _had_ enjoyed it. "You know, I've been planning on discussing their role in disease susceptibility and resistance when I do mine. I specialize in immunology, you see."

"Oh, _really_?" Cosima's use of the word was drawn out and inflected in a way to make it sound like the most genuinely interested "really" Delphine had ever had directed at her. "Wow, then I'm looking forward to your presentation even more, now." _Even more?_ Her smile widened, revealing some unexpectedly pointy and captivating canine teeth. "I bet you give a killer PowerPoint."

Delphine's smile and eyes had widened in return.

"Ah, well, I'm not sure I can match the cheeky use of cartooning in yours," she replied. "But I'd really like to talk it over with you, perhaps over coffee…?"

* * *

They had talked for hours, until something showed up on Cosima's cell phone that made her have to leave again. Delphine had found herself actually forgetting that Cosima was a clone, at times, and that her job was to get close so she could monitor her. They really did have similar fascinations with various scientific topics, and Cosima's gently teasing tone drew her in, making her feel in no time that she was sharing jokes with a friend, rather than someone she'd barely shared a word with before. When Cosima said she'd have to go, Delphine found herself genuinely disappointed, so her eagerness to set up another encounter was sincere, even if her motives were complex.

"I, uh, I was planning to go to this lecture by Dr. Aldous Leekie," she produced a flyer from her bag and handed it over. "He's a very brilliant character and the DYAD Institute is performing some very cutting-edge scientific techniques that I think would really interest you, as a Darwinist. Would you like to go with me?"

Cosima raised an eyebrow, then looked over the paper, finishing with a small grimace.

"Hmm, well, not that it doesn't look intriguing, but I had already planned to go to the new student mixer that night. I told some people I would go." She looked back up at Delphine, her eyes seeking out and locking with her gaze, an unsure smile playing about her lips. "But doesn't that sound like more fun than a lecture? Maybe you'd like to go with me?" Her eyebrows raised in invitation.

_Merde, this was not what was supposed to happen. I'm supposed to get her interested in DYAD_, Delphine thought.

Her smile said different things altogether.

"I'd love to," she said.

* * *

Delphine was drunk. Meeting with Leekie had put her even more on edge than usual. She was feeling flush with her success in getting closer to Cosima, but he wasn't satisfied that things were moving in the right direction. He pulled out a motivational high card, looking at her seriously and saying "you know, her life is in danger," and that was enough to discombobulate her and render her judgment a bit rash and questionable. That and Cosima's playful and enticing nature, of course. After being lured into stealing two bottles of wine and carrying them to a dance party on the other side of campus, Delphine felt helpless as her usually level head became greatly imbalanced in the face of the signals from her body and heart.

The music was loud and they had to raise their voices to talk, but that didn't stop them. They had moved from debating Californian wine vs. French (until they both finally admitted they didn't really give a shit where the wine came from, as long as it was good,) to sharing memories of their previous times being new at schools, to discussing past relationships. It turned out that they had both left suitors behind who had been more into the relationships than they had, in Cosima's case a fellow Berkeley student who had wanted them to pick and go to grad school together, and in Delphine's case a boyfriend who didn't fully understand the importance of her calling and career. He was the one she had based her tears on when she'd waited for Cosima in that hallway a few weeks ago, so although she'd been far over crying over him and moved on to all things DYAD by then, it wasn't strictly a _lie_.

At any rate, they were well into the full-throated laughter stage, and well into — well, Delphine wouldn't call it _flirtation_, would she? — when Cosima suddenly shouted out an excited "oh!" and started moving her hips side to side, taking Delphine's hand.

"Oh, this is, like, one of my favourite songs. C'mon, let's dance!"

And then they were. For a moment. Until Delphine slowed down to fully take in how Cosima was moving, her arms flowing, body undulating like water, at once both controlled in a confident, fully inhabited way, and free, as if she let the sound waves themselves shape her. Her eyes were partially closed, and the way her hips rotated, dipping, and she bent her head to the side in a turn, exposing a long swath of her neck and cleavage, was mesmerizing, the hazy red glow of the lights seeming to spotlight her and only her. Delphine was stilled, biting her lip. She didn't even know how she'd gotten there or why she came anymore. There was only Cosima, moving, Cosima, brilliant and beautiful and warm.

Cosima's eyes opened and she turned her gaze back to Delphine, her smile inviting and her eyes radiating heat. She held out her hands and Delphine let herself be pulled in to her in an instant. They were moving together, pressed close, hips synchronizing, Delphine bending slightly at the neck and knees to get closer to Cosima's height. The world was pitching and swirling in a not-unpleasant way, as the bass thrummed through them, and Delphine caught a hint of Cosima's scent, and the heat of her breath tickling on her neck, her ear.

And then Cosima reached up, and curled one hand around the back of Delphine's neck, the other slipping into her hair, and kissed her.

Delphine was letting it happen before she realized it fully, her hands coming up to Cosima's face, but then her head pulling back slightly. She looked at Cosima, eyes wide, some portion of her brain shrieking, reminding herself that she was there with a job to do, not to fall headlong into some strange romantic spiral with a _woman_, what the hell, much less her _subject_.

Cosima's eyes opened, and it was like the sun being crossed by a cloud.

"Oh," she said, expression sliding into worry, "oh, God, I'm sorry, Delphine. I just… I know, you're not ga—"

And Delphine shut both Cosima and the voice in her own head up by ubruptly pulling her subject's face to hers and kissing her hungrily, giving in to the call her body was sending her, and thoroughly surprising them both, just for an instant, before all their concentration moved to the kiss, to their touches, to getting _closer_.

* * *

Delphine's mind had been blown. It took some time for what one might call her "rational thought" to return some hours later, after the stumble to the taxi, the rush to Cosima's apartment door, the tug and wrestle and removal of clothes as they fell into bed, always resuming kissing, mouths magnetized to one another's, short nails digging into flesh. There had been a brief moment before her orgasm when Delphine's conscience tried asking her again what she was doing, tried flooding her with fear and guilt, and then Cosima had curled her fingers _just so_ and Delphine was launched into warp drive, consciousness streaming like stars falling around her, an animalistic cry starting in her sex and growing as it traveled up her abdomen, through her chest and throat and out into the darkened room, reverberating. She lived there, in those next few minutes, just clutching Cosima to her and breathing her in, then meeting her soft kisses, then breathing as Cosima rolled to lie beside her, the cool air drying their sweat.

It was then that she finally allowed herself to remember: how she had arrived there, what she was supposed to be doing, how little she cared for any of that, at the moment. Her stomach clenched as a pang of remorse hit her heart. She was lying. It was all a lie, everything that had brought her to this woman, this bed, this unintentional and twisted and magnificent situation. Or was it?

Cosima was squinting at her now, taking in the slow tears that Delphine had been unable to stop as they rolled down her face.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly, concerned.

"Yes," Delphine immediately answered. But Cosima propped herself up on her elbow, gently stroking her arm.

"Are you sure?

"I…" Delphine began, and she couldn't do it. She couldn't make up some unlikely story, anymore. This whole headlong reel into the life, the magnetic orbit and the arms of this remarkable woman wasn't who Delphine was, or who she had been. She had been determined, focused. She had been confident of the way she attracted men and perfectly fine in engaging in sex, emotionally detached, for just the pleasure of it or as just another social tool to move forward in her career. This is how it had it had always been, had it not, as her _grand-mère_had told her. One hand washes the other. She had known what she wanted and how the science fascinated her, and she was unashamed, even eager, to play spy in the name of knowledge, of protection.

Until it became Cosima that she wanted, Cosima that fascinated her. Until her detachment had been undermined by sunny smiles and sly witticisms, pure intellect and eloquent, oh-so-skilled hands.

What was it that she was going to say? That… what? That she cried after sex with boys, too?

"Cosima," she said, instead. "I… haven't been entirely honest. There's something I have to tell you."

Cosima's brow furrowed, her face registering concern far more than self-protection.

"I'm not a student," Delphine admitted. "I… I'm supposed to be your monitor. But I hope you can forgive me, because I'm on your side, now."

Leekie and DYAD were about to get far more trouble than they expected.


End file.
